Education Innovation: GEARR Up Your Professional Learning Community

Having the right equipment can make all the difference. Attempting endeavors such as climbing a mountain, scuba diving, flying a plane, racing a car, or painting a great portrait, it is important to have the right gear. The gear we have is important to accomplishing the task.

Professional Learning Communities have their own gear too. Each member brings some unique gear to their PLC and this gear helps the entire PLC accomplish its goal.

When I refer to gear, I am actually referring to GEARR. Each team members' Gifts, Experiences, Abilities, Roles, and Relationships.

Gifts
Gifts are those naturally occuring strengths we each have. Some of us have the gift of leadership, organization, empathy, insight, communication, encouragement, consistency, etc. These gifts give each of us a unique combination of strengths that PLC can leverage to make the team stronger.

Experiences
No two team members will have exactly the same experiences. Experiences is the stuff you have been through that have helped you become the person you are today. Experience is unique to each of us. Each teacher has had experiences as a learner and as an educator. Our experiences as students, as teachers, as parents, etc. give each of us a background the we can draw upon to help the PLC better the meet the needs of our students.

Abilities
These are the skills that we are good at. Some have abilities in technology, others music or art. Some are excellent at collecting and interpreing data. Some can do magic with a spredsheet, while others can draw pictures on a chart perfectly. Other have abilities in making complex ideas simple to understand. Abilities would also include those many skills we have learned along the way in our time as educators. Every staff development session, conference, or training has provided team members wth necessary abilities to be leveraged within the PLC to meet the needs of students.

Roles
Each member of a PLC should have some type of role. Roles can included facilitation, note taking, time keeping, or any thing else the PLC needs to have done. It is through our roles that we share the leadership and the work load of the PLC.

Relationships
Often times we forget just how important the relationships outside of our grade level or department can be. Each member has a network of relationships that can be leveraged to provide insight, help, advice, knowledge, and wisdom to the work of their PLC. The relationships developed by each person can provide a myriad of useful outsiders to help the PLC accomplish its work in improving student achievement.

Every Professional Learning Community has their own GEARR. But, because every PLC has GEARR does not mean they are taking advantage of it. If you leave your gear in the truck it's not going to help you climb that mountain. PLC need to bring their GEARR with them to each and every session. The key is to surface it and then leverage it for maxmimum impact on student learning.

Note: The Professional Networked Learning Collaborative is a powerful model for maximizing GEARR because of the network effect of having many more Gifts, Experiences, Abilities, Roles, and Relationships provided through each members physical and virtual network.